The good girl! The dear good girl! Yes: that was how I thought of her, under the windows of my stepmother's boudoir--while Mrs.Roylake, for all I knew to the contrary, might be looking down at me, and when Lady Lena, the noble and beautiful, was coming to dinner! The letter concluded as follows: "To return to myself.

I gave Miss Cristel the promise on which she had insisted; and then, naturally enough, I inquired into her motive for interfering in your favour.
"She frankly admitted that she was interested in you.

First: in grateful remembrance of old times, when you and your mother had been always good to her.

Secondly: because she had found you as kind and as friendly as ever, now that you were a man and had become the greatest landowner in the county.

There was the explanation I had asked for, at my service.
And, on that, she left me.
"Did I believe her when I was meditating on our interview, alone in my room?
Or did I suspect you of having robbed me of the only consolation that makes my life endurable?
"No such unworthy suspicion as this was admitted to my mind.